Paul Position

Hello again. Miss me?

As far as I'm concerned it's been too long. Way, way too long. Two months have dragged past since my last race, and I'm ready to go. I suppose I've now found out the advantage of having such a long gap in the Champ Car calendar between the Houston and Portland races: it means I didn't miss so much while I was recuperating.

My last column was a preview to the season, so I guess we'll take this in date order.

If I can remember back that far, Las Vegas was a great weekend for Forsythe Championship Racing, even though a refuelling issue restricted us to third place. We started from the front row, we led for a bit, we had good race pace and we got a podium.

We've also tracked down the refuelling problem. The guy who was holding the lever that keeps the fuel valve on the tank open to put fuel into the car let up on it. So to put it simply, the tank wasn't sending fuel because the valve wasn't open.

At least it wasn't a problem due to our tank or our venting system, or issues that other people have encountered. It's a shame it happened though, because other than that, I thought our pitstops were equal or better than the other teams.

Then we went to Long Beach though, and we had the crash in practice. I got out of shape on tyres that weren't fully up to temperature, and the car went through 90 degrees into the wall, which somehow was enough to break a vertebra in my back.

You have to look for the silver lining in those circumstances though, so ... I have to say it's encouraging that my stand-in Oriol Servia proved the Forsythe package was pretty good at Long Beach and Houston.

The team's fuel strategy was right at Long Beach, considering he was coming up from 14th on the grid. He ended up getting a lot of running on a clear track, and at the same time Alex Tagliani was in second, about a second per lap off the pace holding up a train of cars, which let Oriol come out of the pits directly in front of this train.

If the pace had been better with that group, I think realistically the #3 car would have ended up fourth or fifth, but hey, you take the chances you get on the day.

What I can take as a real encouraging sign is that if we took the points Servia scored in those two races - second at Long Beach and fourth at Houston - and add them to what I got in Vegas, we'd be leading the championship.

The team's potential is there. Obviously now some people have done more testing than us, at Portland and Team Australia did a test at Mid Ohio too, whereas we sat still for a month.

However, I was given medical clearance to get back in the car in time to take part in the test at our new track in St Jovite. I went to Indy and made up some new seats for the car, worked with Dr Trammell on my seating position and the seat-belt mounting position and once I was testing the car, I had no real problems with my back.

Mont-Tremblant is fantastic. Mega-fast. And the safety's pretty good - certainly as good as any track in North America. Perhaps not up to snuff compared to a few of the tracks in Europe, but one of the better ones on this continent in terms of track surface, run-off, distance between the track and the walls or run-offs. I'd say it compares very well with Elkhart Lake, Mid Ohio and Laguna Seca.

We didn't really set a quick time, but that wasn't really our test objective. We did 100 miles on both days, and when the track was getting quick we weren't running.

First day we ran only a few hours, doing a lot of longer runs and we were done at four o'clock. Well, from four till five is when the track really picked up a lot of grip. It was pretty hot up there for this time of year, so once the track started to cool down in late afternoon, that was when it was getting faster.

Second day we were done by that time as well. The test plan was for us to be done by about three and I had run my new tyres, and we were out doing just a couple more runs when I went off into the grass and kept sliding into a wall and bent a front corner.

So it was a bit frustrating that we weren't out there at the end when it got mega-quick, but we have a reasonable handle on where we were. When we were out on the track with other cars, we weren't as quick as Bourdais or Wilson - Justin was maybe a tenth or two ahead, Sebastien about four tenths. But we were about equal with Will Power and Simon Pagenaud's Team Australia cars.

Paul Tracy speaks to his engineer © LAT

We're not totally on pace: the balance of the car was a bit understeery, and because St Jovite is a really quick track, that cost us. A couple of corners are flat or just-about-flat and they're followed by straights, so if you can go through those a just a little bit quicker, it makes a big difference to the lap time. We couldn't, so we didn't.

I have a little bit of a question about the DP01. I was on my way to the airport when I heard Justin had gone off the track and hurt his back and couldn't drive the car any more, that day, and that was from just bouncing over a kerb.

Looking at my accident and hearing about Justin's, I've got to wonder why it seems the chassis didn't dissipate the energy. It's like it just gets sent back into the car and through the driver.

Of course, while we were testing in Canada, it was the final day of practice for the Indy 500. I'm very happy for my former team-mate Dario, although I have to say he was pretty lucky, but it's nice for him to have luck on his side once in a while.

I feel sorry for Tony Kanaan, because he was the fastest out there from what I saw. In fact, on the whole, you'd have to say the Andretti Green cars looked faster than the Ganassi machines, but Indy is a funny place, and you can get quirky results.

I can honestly say that I had no wish to be there though. I didn't even watch it closely. I was out on the lake. I watched the start and went out, and I came back and didn't realise it had been rain-delayed, so the chequered flag was just coming out after I walked in the door.

If Indy was part of our championship I'd be happy to race there again, but that would take one series, and I don't see that happening before I retire.

By the way, I was asked if I was interested in doing the NASCAR Busch race in Montreal in August, but I've turned it down. For one thing, it was going to be in a Hendrick Motorsport car, which carries Coca-Cola sponsorship.

Now as you may be aware, I have got personal sponsorship with Monster energy drink, a deal I announced back in Vegas. So although Monster weren't against it, it wouldn't have been the right thing to do to have a sponsorship clash. I mean, Monster has now launched in Canada, so it would be a pity for them to miss the opportunity to promote through me.

The other thing that swung me against the ride was that Jerry wasn't keen. I said before the season started that I'd concentrate on Champ Car and not do other things, but having missed two out of three races and being about 50 points behind Bourdais right now, I figured that extra-curricular activities might be fair game again. But I can see Jerry's view too, so no problem. We've gotta focus.

It will be interesting to see how Servia and I work together this weekend, because we've never been team-mates before. Jerry has only given Oriol a one-race deal because the team's trying to help Mario Dominguez and David Martinez find money.

I'm not in control of it: it's Jerry's team, it's his toy to do with whatever he wants. I can't worry about what else is happening or who my team mate is; I just have to concentrate on my programme.

The new Monster energy drink colors on the helmet of Paul Tracy © LAT

I told my engineer last week that he better bring an A-standard car for Portland, because it's always been a B-standard track for me. We need to do everything we can do to compensate. Having said that, I'm hoping my left-foot braking - which I hadn't started doing this time last year - will help a bit.

I reckon in the past, not doing that has limited me compared to others at Portland, because using the left foot gives you a chance to balance the car with the brake on those long corners. But to go quick there you also have to have the balance of the car spot on anyway, so we're going to be working hard on that.

We've got to aim for a podium finish. I do that at every race because finishing outside the top three doesn't really interest me anyhow. The points situation won't necessarily make me a bigger threat now I've got less to lose.

Obviously I want to finish races - a bunch of DNFs won't do us any favours. I'm currently, what ... 15th in the championship? Falling out of a couple of races isn't going to help that much, so I need to play it smart.

On the other hand, I will push as hard as ever. I just wanna get the season going, and that's exactly what we're going to do. Having sat with our thumbs up our asses for two months, Champ Car now has six races in eight weeks!

Personally, I've only done two races in the last seven months, and that's incredibly frustrating considering I came into this season looking at it as a do-over, a great opportunity to fight for the Champ Car title.

It's still possible, I suppose, but it's going to take a miracle or two. You don't pull back 50 points to Bourdais and Newman/Haas/Lanigan easily.

Even if Sebastien got a couple of DNFs, the way our scoring system works means he's still going to get something. It's not like he's absent like I was, where he gets a couple of zeroes. Hell, he got eight points for smacking walls in Vegas.

Right, I'm out of here. Get back to you soon.

PT